June 28, 2006

Princes, Clerics, and Censors

It opens with an account of the appearance of the daily newspaper Shams, partly owned by Prince Turki al-Faisal, launched in 2005 aimed at a young demographic and pushing against some of the traditional red lines. Shams got shut down for running the cartoons of Mohammed for a couple of weeks, after "hard-line clerics and
religious figures protested Shams’liberal
approach and urged authorities to take action. A compromise worked out
through the Information Ministry allowed the paper to reopen if it
dismissed its 32-year-old editor-in-chief, Batal al-Qaws. He was fired
in late February."The CPJ report notes both positive and negative developments:

Today, Saudi papers publish news and opinions that would have
been unthinkable just a few years ago, even as government and religiousofficials
employ an array of behind-the-scenes controls to curtail enterprising
coverage that offends the government or important religious
constituencies....Following the seismic events of September 11, 2001, when terrorists
attacked the United States, and May 12, 2003, when suicide bombers
struck Riyadh and killed more than two dozen people, the country’s
bottled-up media demonstrated periods of boldness and addressed
once-taboo topics such as crime, unemployment, women’s rights—and, most
significant, religious militancy. Today, Saudi columnists publish
probing articles about religious extremists’ use of summer camps to
indoctrinate Saudi youth, while commentators argue that women should
have the right to drive cars. The government has allowed at least onenew daily publication to appear on newsstands,and
newly licensed dailies are said to be on the way. Applications for
visas and long-term accreditation for foreign journalists, once
exercises in futility, are being granted to international news
organizations.

But progress has been uneven and
limited, and the margin of freedom is one that “is given and taken
away,” said Khaled al-Dakhil, a liberal academic whose columns for the
Saudi-owned daily Al-Hayat of London were abruptlybanned
by the government after he questioned official reform efforts.
Independent writers point to a web of formal and informal restrictions
that prevent them from covering central social and political issues of
the day.

The report identifies three major problems:

Government
officials dismiss editors, suspend or blacklist dissident writers,
order news blackouts on controversial topics, and admonish independent
columnists over their writings to deter undesirable criticism or to
appease religious constituencies.

The country’s conservative religious establishment acts as a powerful
lobbying force against enterprising coverage of social, cultural, and
religious matters. The multilayered religious sector includes official
clerics, religious scholars, the religious police, radical revivalist
preachers, and their followers.

Compliant
government-approved editors squelch controversial news, acquiesce to
official pressures to tone down coverage, and silence critical voices. Independent reporting on politics remains nearly absent from the Saudi
press, CPJ’s analysis found. While newspapers occasionally criticize
the performance of low-level government ministries or public
institutions, critical coverage of the royal family, friendly foreign
governments, rampant corruption, regional divisions, and oil revenue
allocations remain off-limits. Debate over major foreign policy
positions and the concerns of the country’s disenfranchised Shiite
minority are also considered banned topics.

It sums up the state of the Saudi media like this:

Although newspapers are privately owned, the state exerts tremendous
influence over what is reported. The government approves the
appointments of editors-in-chief, a process that journalists say is
done behind closed doors with the oversight of Prince Nayef bin Abdel
Aziz, the powerful interior minister. In practice, though not by law,
newspapers require the financial or political backing of a member of
the royal family. Unlike in other parts of the region, “opposition
journalism” simply doesn’t exist in Saudi Arabia. While some columnists
have criticized low-level ministers, news coverage is typically devoid
of anything reflecting negatively on the royal family, high-ranking
officials, and the country’s religious clerics and institutions.

Top editors and most journalists view themselves as defenders of the
ruling Al-Saud family, and government officials ensure allegiance by
applying behind-the-scenes pressure—issuing directions on sensitive
stories, banning coverage of certain topics, and taking punitive
actions against journalists. Over the past decade, CPJ research shows,
dozens of editors, writers, academics, and other media critics have
been suspended, dismissed from their jobs, or banned from appearing in
the Saudi press. The actions came by government order, the intervention
of religious leaders, or at the initiative of editors. Other
journalists have faced detention, questioning by security authorities,
and travel bans.

The CPJ report presents numerous examples of columnists and reporters who were fired, banned, or worse.

Abdel Mohsen Mosallam, who wrote poems critical of the judiciary ("Mosallam’s editor was dismissed, reportedly at the order of the interior minister;Mosallam himself was detained and banned from writing in the Saudi press."

Jamal Khashoggi, whose newspaper attacked clerics for condoning terrorism ("Al-Watan’s Khashoggi was the most notable casualty; he was
forced to step down on the order of then-Crown Prince Abdullah bin
Abdel Aziz. Interior Minster Nayef rebuked editors for articles
criticizing Wahhabism, and, over the course of several months,
government agents warned editors and writers to steer clear of
religious taboos, the religious establishment, and reforms being
discussedby intellectuals.");

Hussein Shobokshi, who wrote in favor of an accountable government with greater rights for women ("He was quickly blacklisted from the Saudi press for the next year and
his newly launched talk show on the Saudi-owned satellite broadcaster
Al-Arabiya was cancelled. His editor told Shobokshi that he was banned,
but the editor didn’t say why or by whom. “The ban was so ugly I could not write anywhere,” Shobokshi said in an
interview in the Saudi Red Sea port of Jeddah. “It taught me how things
are run in this country.” The case is emblematic of the
behind-the-scenes pressures facing outspokenSaudi
journalists. Shobokshi’s ban was never announced, and there was no
documentation that the journalist ever saw. Although many bans are
imposed by fax from the Ministry of Information, journalists said,
others are handled with simple phone calls from religious or political
officials.

Wajeha al-Howeidar, who wrote about women's rights ("in 2003 Saudi newspapers abruptly stopped publishing her articles. “I
learned while I was on vacation. Friends said, ‘We heard you were
banned,’”... The ban was triggered, though, by a May 2003 piece that described the
case of an abused Saudi teen who took photos of his bruises with the
intention of eventually suing his father. His father had gone
unpunished, she wrote.... The Information Ministry, according to al-Howeidar, approached her last
summer and offered to lift the ban if she traveled abroad as a goodwill
ambassador and spoke about advances in women’s rights in Saudi Arabia.
She refused.)

Hassan Malaki ("permanently blacklisted for questioning Wahhabism")

Mansour al-Nogaidan, who wrote an op-ed in the New York Times criticizing the Saudi educational system ("summoned to a five-star hotel in Riyadh for questioning by intelligence agents... Agents
phoned him within days with the terse message that his writings had
“offended the state.” He was detained for five days by the mubahith, and editors at Al-Riyadh wouldn’t publish his columns for several months.)

There is a lot more in this extremely well-done report by Joel Campagna. It may help to explain why so many of us are so deeply skeptical of the Saudi owned media, including al-Sharq al-Awsat and al-Arabiya, even if they are currently following a broadly pro-American line.